Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs: From “defective as a human being” to “thief of ideas”, the clashes between geniuses

Although Bill Gates lavish praise on the deceased Steve Jobs At present, both starred in a stormy relationship. Tech geniuses constantly collided, Throwing all kinds of harsh phrases for a long time.

Jobs’ death in 2011 ended the standoff, giving way to a perhaps sweeter version of the father of Apple. However, the newspaper library is there.

At the time, Bill Gates called Jobs someone “fundamentally strange” and “strangely flawed as a human being.” quotes it Walter Isaacson in his Steve Jobs biography.

For his part, in the 1980s Jobs said about the creator of Microsoft that he was a “idea thief” “He just completely ripped us off, because Gates has no shame.”

The origin of a rivalry, Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs

The crashes date back to the early years of the Macintosh. Microsoft and Apple worked together on its development: by 1985, Bill Gates’ company announced the first version of Windows, which angered Steve Jobs, who considered the idea to be his.

According to Isaacson, Gates didn’t care, knowing that the graphical interfaces would be great and not believing that Apple had exclusive rights to the idea. In addition, the father of Microsoft said that Apple took the plan from Xerox PARC laboratories.

“Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way to look at it here. I think it’s more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal his TV, realizing that you had already stolen it”, said Gates, always quoted by Walter Isaacson.

With the passage of time, the rivalry became more sour.

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, So I think now he feels more comfortable in philanthropy than in technology,” Jobs said in 2006, when Gates left Microsoft.

The praise of the final years, to put a cloak of peace on the discussions

In the last years of Steve Jobs, they were able to share at events, where they recognized some positive details about each other.

“I would give a lot to be like Steve” Gates said, quoted by the Wall Street Journal. From the opposite corner Jobs responded: “I admire him for the company he built, it’s impressive, and I enjoyed working with him. He is brilliant and actually has a good sense of humor.”

Gates would recognize, after the death of Jobs in 2011, that he respected the father of Apple. “We encourage each other, even as competitors. Nothing he said bothered me at all.”